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  <title>The Revolution will be chock-full of non-coders</title>
  <meta name="date" contents="2014-03-21 8:45" />
  <meta name="author" contents="Deb Nicholson" />
  <meta name="tags" contents="contributors, community" />
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<p>
This weekend, my friend <a href="http://mmillions.wordpress.com/">Molly de Blanc</a>
and I are going to be speaking at <a href="https://libreplanet.org/2014/">LibrePlanet</a>
about Nurturing Non-Coders. It feels like a pretty timely topic. The
current issue of Model View Culture just published a insightful piece on
the <a href="http://modelviewculture.com/pieces/the-myth-of-the-non-technical-startup-employee">treatment of non-technical employees at start-ups</a>
and here at MediaGoblin, we've been overwhelmed with non-coding help during
our <a href="http://mediagoblin.org/pages/campaign.html">campaign.</a>
I'd like to take some time to highlight a few of our amazing
volunteers and hopefully inpsire some potential non-coders to find a
project that needs their help.
</p>

<p>
Fateh Slavitskaya (of <a href="http://urchn.org/">Urchn/Wires for Empathy</a>
 fame), who is already super-busy with her own 3D animation
production work, helped us immensely with the script on our campaign video.
She also used her formidable messaging and communication skills to mold our
<a href="https://www.newschallenge.org/challenge/2014/submissions/mediagoblin-decentralized-social-media-publishing-for-everyone">Knight Foundation grant proposal</a>
into a cohesive pitch.  (See also <a href="https://www.newschallenge.org/challenge/2014/submissions/invisible-city">her own proposal for a free software documentary</a>!)
When I say we couldn't have done it without her, I mean it just would
not have happened.
</p>

<p>
Free software activist, Laura Arjona created
<a href="http://mediagoblin.org/news/video-captions-on-campaign.html">English and Spanish subtitles</a>
for our video allowing us to bring the MediaGoblin word to both
Spanish-speakers and deaf and hard of hearing community. Plus, she's
been constantly boosting us on social media. She even just gave a
lightning talk about getting MediaGoblin into Debian at the
<a href="http://bcn2014.mini.debconf.org/">Debian Women Minidebconf in Barcelona</a>
-- another audience we would not have reached without her initiative.
</p>

<p>
Speaking of subtitles, we're also really grateful to Pieter van der Eems
who did the Dutch subtitles, Matti Lammi who gave us the Finnish
version, Sebastian Riedel who added German, French translations by Mathieu Duponchelle,
and Czech translations by digital_dreamer. Folks who aren't known to
us could be sharing the MediaGoblin video with Finnish, German,
French, Czech, and Dutch speakers -- which is pretty exciting. Go
internet!
</p>

<p>Have you ever wondered why MediaGoblin's stuff has such a lovely
consistent aesthetic? It's because of the work of our dedicated
designers, like Jef van Schendel who laid down all the original look
and feel of MediaGoblin, Jeremy Pope who has done further design and
updated us to a more responsive design, and Nils Georg Heinrich
Reichert who (via an internship) has been pitching in on the website
design -- especially the
<a href="http://mediagoblin.org/pages/campaign.html">campaign page</a>.
On the video side, Bassam Kurdali
(also of <a href="http://urchn.org/">Urchn/Wires for Empathy</a>
fame!) gave us lots of help with animation direction and advice.</p>

<p>
Socially speaking, we also really appreciate folks like Paul Tagliamonte (and others!)
who have <a href="http://blog.pault.ag/post/78948241683/donate-to-mediagoblin">blogged about us</a>
(<a href="http://mediagoblin.org/news/help-spread-the-campaign.html">you can help too!</a>)
and everyone else who's re-shared on Diaspora or written in with
feedback. MediaGoblin won't succeed if the only people who care about
it are the folks writing the code. Or put another way, it takes a
virtual village to raise a goblin.  Thanks for all your hard work!
</p>

<p class="centered">
  <a href="/pages/campaign.html"
     ><img src="/blog_images/goblin_force_badge-campaign.png"
           alt="goblin force badge for campaign"></a>
</p>
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